The Second Book of Lankhmar

underground proved overlong — which might well be the case, he must admit.
           He noticed now that although his arms lay flat against his sides, they had during his second descent — each bent at the elbow and his hands pushed upward by the sandy soil through which he'd descended — crawled up the front of his body toward his waist, so the fingers of his right now rested against the scabbard of his dagger Cat's Claw, a contact he found reassuring. He set himself to working his fingers up the scabbard, pausing to regularize his breathing whenever it became the least bit labored. When his fingers finally reached their goal, he was surprised to discover they touched, not the dagger's crosspiece and grip, but a section of the sharp, narrow blade near the tip. The sandy soil encasing him, rubbing upward against his body as he'd descended, had also almost carried the dagger entirely out of its sheath.
           He pondered this new circumstance, wondering if he should attempt to return the strayed weapon to its scabbard by drawing it down a little at a time by its blade pinched between his forefinger and thumb, lest some further sliding on his part separate him from it altogether, a prospect that alarmed him. Or should he try to work his hand up farther still and grip its hilt so as to have it ready for action should some unforeseen change in his situation ever permit him to use it? This line of operations appealed to him most, though promising to involve more work.
           During the course of this self-debate he thoughtlessly asked himself aloud, "Which or which?" and instantly winced in anticipation of heavy pain. But he had spoken in quite soft tones, and although the words thundered a bit in his ears, there were no other dolorous consequences. He was enheartened to discover that he could enjoy his own conversational companionship underground, provided he spoke not much louder than a whisper, for truth to tell, he was becoming quite lonely. But after trying it out two or three times, he desisted; he found that every time he spoke he felt ridiculously terrified of being overheard and so betraying his presence and being taken at a disadvantage, though what or whom he had to fear deep in the dirty bosom of this scantily populated polar island he could not say. Not carnivorous Kleshite ghouls, surely? But likely the gods, if such rogue beings exist, who are said to hear our faintest spoken words, even our whispers.
           After a time he decided to let the problem of Cat's Claw rest a while and once again risk a visual inspection of his surroundings, since the persistent reddish glow within his eyelids told him that he had carried his own peculiar illumination to this deeper spot. He had not done this earlier for two reasons. First, it seemed wise to attend only to one thing at a time besides his breathing; to attempt more would invite exhaustion and a confusion that might well lead to panic and loss of the control that he had with difficulty won. Second, he had so few activities open to him in his constricted circumstance that he would do well to hoard them and dole them out like a miser, lest he fall victim to a boredom that might well become literally maddening, a suicidal tedium.
           Taking the same precautions as he had before, he got his eyes open without incident and once again found himself facing a blurred grainy wall, only this time streaked with white and dull blue, as though there were an admixture of chalk and slate in the soil hereabouts. And once again he discovered that the longer he stared at it, to the accompaniment only of his measured silent ex- and inhalations, the deeper he was able to see into it by some power of occult vision.
           For a while this time there were no definite objects to be seen, such as the worm and the pebbles, yet there were fugitive glimmerings and tiny marching movements such as the eyes see when there is no light, making it hard to determine whether they were happening inside his eyes or out in the reaches of cold ground.
           Eventually, at a distance, he judged, of eight or ten feet out from him, the blue-shadowed white streaks began to organize themselves into a slender female figure, upright as he was and facing him, as pale as death, with eyes and lips serenely shut as though she were asleep. A strange quality in the blue-shadowed whiteness seemed familiar to him and this daunted him, though where and when he had